Saturday, January 16. Big Island of Hawaii: Hilo and Lava

Morning

 It’s strange but wonderful: smelling bacon while gazing over the ocean at a beautiful sunrise.  We have to say goodbye to the terrific Un-Cruise crew and beautiful yacht this morning. 

Everyone lines up at the slippin’ and slidin’ gangplank to say “mahalo” or thank you. 

 

 

 After our suitcases are loaded onto the bus, Jackie drives us through cattle/cowboy (paniolo) country.  It reminds me of the golden brown summer-time hills of California. 

 

 

 

 

 

 Our bathroom stop is at Tex-Malasada Hawaii, a place well-known for the Portuguese equivalent of Krispy Kreme donuts (with no cream). 

I don’t buy one and won’t even taste those offered me.  I love sugar and fat combined but that’s the trouble.  I would need five before I’d quit.  My family’s addiction genes…  

Lots of flowers in the parking lot get me away from the sweet smells.  Got my favorite combo:  flower with insect.

 

 Jackie takes advantage of a detour to show off Rainbow Falls, just slightly off our route.

 WAILUKU RIVER STATE PARK

Rainbow Falls Section

Andrew, our marvelous leader, and his high school friend, Brian, take a selfie-in-the-sun.  Their joking is sometimes hysterical.  Both were born and raised in Hawaii but Brian now lives in California.

 

I think the flowers in this state park may be natives.  I hope so.

 HILO

We have a bus tour of commercial Hilo before Andrew volunteers to walk us through their famous Farmers’ Market.   

Lots of beautiful  stuff.  Wish I could bring home some fruit.  
The health food store has some Volcano Honey.  What?  Whatever it is, it’s expensive.

Can't be false advertising:  "Fake Gauge Earrings"

I walk down the main drag, toward the Mokupapapa Discovery Center  when I spot the Salvation Army.  I was hoping to find one cause shopping at exotic Sallies is a hobby.  [Marguerite and I found terrific stuff in a two-story shop in Bergen, Norway.]  Here, I get a tie-die shirt and a hospital nurse’s top in Hawaiian patterns/colors for $6. 

I pay this palm-weaver one dollar to talk with her and take her picture since I had no room for a basket in my suitcase.  Some women friends recently taught her how to weave. 

 One of the many homeless people I  saw in Honolulu and here, in Hilo, who remind me yet again how lucky I am.  I see an older woman with her belongings in a shopping cart at the beach pavilion.  A nurse (maybe) in street clothes asks how she is doing and whether she is eating properly.  At least it’s warm here.  Wonder who stays at the Hilo Bay Hostel.

The Discovery center is free but the top half is closed for an event.  Disappointing, cause I like what I see on the first floor. 

Goodness!  What is "Hot Buddhi Yoga?"  Do they do yoga on hot lava?  I just love signs on bulletin boards.

  A sad sign in a restaurant window indicates that Hawaii is not some sort of fantasy island.

After stopping at a  newly opened Indian restaurant for a mango lassi, I walk back to the farmers’ market.  What I thought was a second type of ginger is…turmeric!  I’d never seen that “live!”  A guy is singing country music at a restaurant nearby.  It reminds me — yet again — that this is not a foreign country.  I’m in the United States.  They have the same money “we” do.  It’s so embarrassing.  I wonder whether I’ll be the same way in Alaska.

AFTERNOON AND EVENING

At precisely 2:45 PM we load up the bus for Jackie to take us “home” to the Hilo Hawaiian Hotel.  Beautiful grounds surround it.  Banyan Drive is lined with (what else?) banyan trees.  Famous/rich people plant them there so each tree has a name.  President Nixon planted one.  It died.  

Great view out the window too.






We leave soon after checking in, joined by the marvelous Rob McGovern, Naturalist and retired Education Specialist with the Volcano Art Center.  Although it was long ago that he left Ireland, his accent is definitely not Hawaiian.  He’s a natural born story teller.  

He tells us about everything!  For instance:  After a big fire outside Hilo years ago, all Asian seeds were dispersed onto the burnt ground by plane because they did not think native trees would grow fast enough.  There are three sexes of papaya (a non-native):  male, female, and hermaphrodite.    Only the hermaphrodite is useful and tasty.  They fruit and grow like weeds all year. 

"Non-Hawaiians think that volcanoes destroy; Hawaiians say that when Madam Pele comes, she creates."

 First we see last year’s lava at the Pahoa Recycling Station. 

The strange thing about it is that a chain link fence seems to have stopped the flow. 

Only one house was destroyed here.  Rob thinks it likely that Hilo will be hit by another, bigger volcano.

 A pretty flower blooms only a few feet away.

 Rob answers questions about minerals that are distributed in the basalt.

Ferns already have begun colonizing in the ropy-looking lava.  Eventually, they will turn it into very fertile soil.

 This area, says Rob, once grew lumber, then cattle, then sugar — all of which were finished by the 1960’s, when hippies arrived.

  When we Road Scholars  stretch out in different directions to explore things, we’ve got handy-dandy receivers to hear whoever is speaking on the microphone. 

 Then before sunset we see older flows (about nine years ago) near the east rift zone of Kilauea Volcano. 

 Two kinds of ferns set up shop already.

A native seaside plant on the black sand brought here by the sea.

Some of the lava reminds me of the saggy baggy elephant’s skin.  There are two kinds of lava:  a’a, which is rough and pointy and hard to walk on, and pahoehoe, which is smooth.  [Although Hawaiian words, this is how volcanologists throughout the world label them.]  Mostly what we see tonight is pahoehoe.  But both kinds are basalt (the basic material).   It’s how the lava comes from the volcano that determines this difference in shape, whether it explodes out the opening or comes out in slower waves.  At least that’s what I understand.

Hawaiian and other artists enjoy creating art and political statements in the lava.

 The very best post-eruption tree (pioneer) tree is the native Ohia.  It's a fast grower and has beautiful red flowers when mature.

 Rob thinks that Mauna Loa will be the next to erupt.  He thinks that increases in sulphur gas and increases in swelling of the land will give about a month’s notice.  

 After a box dinner, when it’s completely dark, we drive 30 miles up the mountain to the top of Kilauea volcano, about 4,000 feet elevation.  

We see the fire of the Halema’uma’u vent safely at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. It’s been erupting for 34 years.
 

There used to be a parking lot and driveway closer to where the fire is but recent eruptions did away with them.  It’s quite dangerous to be close.  A core of hot magma just like this is under my feet in Georgia but I never think of it.  Definitely time for bed.